A native of San Bernardino, Mr. Brown has served Stater Bros. Markets, the only Inland Empire Fortune 500 company, as president for 27 years and chairman of the board for 19. He has built the company into Southern California's only locally owned supermarket chain, as well as one of the largest in America. With profound commitment to his employees as well as to the economic well-being of the Inland Empire, he and his directors arranged to keep Stater Bros. operations in the "Heartland," moving recently from Colton to the City of San Bernardino when Stater Bros. outgrew its former properties.

Mr. Brown has been given many significant honors, including being named one of ten 1992 Horatio Alger Award winners in Washington, D.C. (others that year were former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and author-poet Maya Angelou) and in 2005 the Sidney R. Rabb Award, the supermarket industry's highest award, from the Food Marketing Institute.

Mr. Brown has always been a passionate supporter of education and enrichment at all levels, from chairing the finance committee of Dr. Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral Ministries in Garden Grove to helping to found the Boys and Girls Club of San Bernardino; mentoring work with students at his alma mater, San Bernardino High School; instruction as an adjunct professor in CSUSB's College of Business and Public Administration; service to the University of Redlands, the University of California, Riverside and CSUSB on major advisory boards; the creation of the Rose Brown Scholarships at CSUSB; his support of college scholarships for employees of Stater Bros.; and his contributions toward building Jack H. Brown Hall at CSUSB.

In recognition of his many remarkable accomplishments and contributions to this community, the Board of Trustees of the California State University and California State University, San Bernardino are proud to confer upon Jack H. Brown the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.